A neighborhood gathering in the spring prompted me to evaluate how to make my draft homebrew more portable. I’ve seen creative ways to do it with 5 gallon kegs, but opted for a small 3 gallon keg setup.

I bought a new 3 gallon ball lock keg (from My Local Homebrew Shop – my shop of choice) knowing that I could use it in my keezer, but that I could also take my beer on the go using it in a portable setup. I bought a faucet with ball lock connection, similar to this one sold on Amazon. I purchased a keg charger from MyLHBS (w/ ball lock adapter), which allows me to give the keg shots of CO2 using BB gun style cartridges (1 will last for my entire 3 gallon keg) to keep the beer flowing. My charger is similar to this one (although I purchased a different model at MyLHBS). I then purchased a Keg Glove 3 gallon insulated sleeve, along with the ice blanket to keep the keg cold. Luckily for me, More Beer had clearanced these out.

Here are the key points:

1) You must have a fully carbonated keg for this to work. The keg charger is only used every few pours to move the beer from keg to glass.

2) You must have a cold keg first. The Keglove works great to keep the keg cold for hours (even in warm temps) – but only if the keg/beer start out cold. I also keep the ice packs and the sleeve in the freezer.

Given that this is only 3 gallons and you don’t need a 5lb CO2 tank, and you don’t have to deal with melting ice bags – it’s easy to carry around wherever you go (neighborhood, beach, etc).

If you have questions feel free to comment below and, as always, feel free to subscribe to my blog (to the left) for homebrew tips.